Agency Buzz

Stephanie Hayman Talks to Long Island Business News About the Changing Landscape of Facebook

In January Facebook once again announced it is changing its algorithms, and organizations – businesses, brands and media – that hope to reach their target market must adapt, experts say.

About a month ago, Facebook’s CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg announced that posts from businesses and publications are “crowding out the personal moments that lead us to connect more with each other.” And so under the new algorithms, Facebook users will “see less public content like posts from businesses, brands, and media.” Any public content, he said, “should encourage meaningful interactions between people.”

Those that stand to get hit the hardest are publishers “that push out content 20 to 30 times a day” and those that post “organic content” – the posts on a Facebook page for free – said Stephanie Hayman, the social media manager at Melville-based EGC Group. (That change is expected to drive people who are used to keeping up with current events on Facebook to get their news directly from a publication’s site, according to a survey by CooperKatz, a New York-based public relations firm.)

But businesses should note that “the average brand putting money behind a post to highlight a brand or anything brand-related won’t be affected,” Hayman said. And she pointed out that in recent years “organic content wasn’t the most ideal way to to gain traction. You need to put money behind it.”